The 20-Year Renovation

A couple's painstaking—and never-ending—redo of their Hudson River property

By

Alyssa Abkowitz

Dec. 6, 2012 9:59 p.m. ET

Palisades, N.Y.

Photographer Rodney Smith's work exudes a spontaneous energy that's often captured, Mr. Smith says, in a few seconds, like his 2007 shot of a man leaping over a New York rooftop.

The 20-Year Renovation

Rear exterior view of Rodney Smith and Leslie Smolan's home. The studio can be seen on the far right. Adam Golfer for The Wall Street Journal

But the nearly completed renovation of his property on the west bank of the Hudson River that he shares with his wife, design and branding executive Leslie Smolan, is anything but impulsive. The nearly 7,000-square-foot four-bedroom, five-bathroom main house, and a separate 4,500-square-foot studio, are a result of a highly expensive, meticulous and painstaking remodel that's been going on for more than 20 years. Now nearing completion, the main home, built in the 1850s, has modern and classical influences, with rift-sawn white oak flooring, marble kitchen countertops and custom-made Tibetan rugs. All the rooms on the main floor are painted a soft China white. There are virtually no overhead lights—Mr. Smith abhors the forced brightness of them, preferring accent lamps and valances to distribute light in the hallways. (Ms. Smolan, co-founder of New York design agency Carbone Smolan, relishes the overheads in her home office. "I need them to actually see," she says.)

The layout is open and airy, with large windows and mostly neutral-colored furniture. Ms. Smolan, who recently released a book with agency co-founder Ken Carbone that highlights their best design projects, such as dinnerware for Dansk and signage for the Louvre, decorated both the home and the studio. When she finds something she likes, she repeats it; the majority of their lamps have double-pleated shades from Besselink & Jones in England and every bathroom floor has basket-weave-patterned tiles from Waterworks. Much of the furniture is Biedermeier, which blends Ms. Smolan's contemporary design preference with Mr. Smith's love of classicism.

Mr. Smith's attraction to order and precision permeates the house. A cabinet door hides the microwave and built-in drawers in the master bedroom hold Mr. Smith's monogrammed dress shirts in a cascading fashion. Even the firewood pile out back is aligned and neatly stacked.

Most of the walls are filled with Mr. Smith's prints, ranging in size from a typical 8-by-10-inch photo taken on the couple's honeymoon in Italy, to a floor-to-ceiling print of one of his most famous photographs, "Skyline," taken in 1995, which depicts dapperly dressed individuals holding umbrellas with New York City's Twin Towers in the background.

The only place Mr. Smith's work isn't present is in the couple's bedroom. "I wanted to have the people who inspired me to be a photographer around the room," Mr. Smith says. Works from Andre Cortes and Manuel Álvarez Bravo flank the focal point of the room, a custom-made mahogany canopy bed designed by Ms. Smolan and made in England.

Mr. Smith, 65, who says he's an "extremely anxious person," says he can be a bit neurotic when it comes to his abode. The sheets are ironed and the hedges are perfectly manicured; nearly every day a worker is cleaning or fixing or trimming some part of the property. The only spot where there's even the slightest sense of disorder is in the couple's teenage daughter's room, where she's allowed to tack concert tickets and Harry Potter paraphernalia above her desk.

Ms. Smolan and Mr. Smith met in 1988 when he came to show his photographs to her agency. Later that year, the couple bought the 4,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, four-bath home that is now Mr. Smith's studio for $700,000. At the time, the property had Pepto-Bismol-colored walls and overgrown shrubs crawling up its stone facade. "I could see it had good bones, but Leslie thought I was crazy," Mr. Smith says.

For the next decade, they renovated the property, transforming it into a meticulous and monastic residence with a mix of French, Southwestern and Shaker styles. They brought plasterers from Ireland to cast the walls with curved baseboards and without moldings—a difficult task—and never thought twice about redoing the downstairs hallway ceiling, after deciding it felt too much like a tunnel. "We have a tendency to do things over and over again," says Ms. Smolan.

In 1996, with their house still under renovation, the couple bought the adjacent home—a light-gray stucco classical—for $1.3 million. Mr. Smith says they were planning to "just replace the roof" but ended up doing another entire renovation after finding rotted framing. They moved into that home in 2000 and turned the other home into Mr. Smith's studio. The couple says it's hard to put a price tag on what they spent for this quality, but they believe replicating it in both homes would cost around $14 million. A 3,400-square-foot home in the neighborhood that has five bedrooms and three bathrooms is on the market for nearly $6 million.

The couple's meticulousness extends to even the most mundane spaces. The garage and mechanical rooms are lined in solid mahogany and the generator and air conditioners are hidden behind trimmed hedges. In Mr. Smith's studio, white gloves sit in a box next to his professional albums, ready to be donned before one flips through the pages.

The apex may be the basement, which Mr. Smith is most proud of. The breaker box hangs on mahogany panels and electrical wires are cinched together in a precise line that winds up the ceiling. Pipes stacked on top of one another make a 90-degree turn in a line on the wall, and each one is numbered and labeled with a little brass tag that notes, "HW 5," which is then printed "Hot Water 5" on a framed sheet hung on a column. "Plumbers are shocked when they come down here," he says.

Mr. Smith says his fixation with order comes from his parents; his father was a fashion executive and his mother was obsessed with outward appearances, particularly in the home. He says his rebellion, in some sense, "was to be extremely meticulous in everything, whether it's seen or not seen." Even the shelves full of 200 cans of oil-based paint that's no longer made (it adheres better than latex paint on plaster), and a cabinet filled with non-LED light bulbs—he can't stand the new ones—are perfectly stacked.

One a recent fall afternoon, Ms. Smolan and Mr. Smith discuss what's still on the punch list to refix or redo, such as the imminent redo of their master bathroom. "It's never really going to be done," Mr. Smith says of their home. "We'll always find something to perfect."

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